A 62-year-old grandmother who prosecutors said ran drugs to support her bingo habit has been sentenced to three years in prison and a $150,000 fine.Acting on a tip, state police stopped Leticia Villareal Garcia near Bisbee in southeast Arizona in February 2005 and found 214 pounds of marijuana stuffed into the trunk of her car.Garcia has maintained her innocence, telling the judge at her sentencing Friday that she was unaware of the grass as she headed for a bingo game."I never, never had any knowledge of that car being loaded when I went to Tucson," the Bisbee resident told Cochise County Superior Court Judge Wallace Hoggatt.Garcia testified at her trial in November that her son's godfather had borrowed her car the day before. Her lawyer, Robert Zohlmann, said she had been used as a "blind mule" to unknowingly haul drugs.... http://www.usatoday.com

The body of a 3-year-old boy was found in a septic tank less than 10 feet from the house where he was reported missing, Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan said Saturday. The body of Loic J.M. Rogers was found late Friday, and an autopsy showed that he drowned, Meehan said. "This is a tragedy," Meehan said. It was unclear how the boy got into the septic tank, and the manhole-sized lid was closed. Meehan did not classify the death as a homicide, but said investigators do not believe he could have climbed into the tank and put the lid back on himself. An investigation is continuing. The boy was reported missing Wednesday night near Kalispell, about 190 miles northwest of Helena. Mark Rogers, Loic's father, told police he took Loic to his car outside a friend's home, told the boy to get in and then returned to the house for Loic's sister. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2829336

Serious disagreement has broken out among scientists over a United Nations climate report's contention that the world's greatest wilderness - Antarctica - will be largely unaffected by rising world temperatures. The report, to be published on Friday, will be one of the most comprehensive on climate change to date, and will paint a grim picture of future changes to the planet's weather patterns. Details of the report were first revealed by The Observer last weekend. However, many researchers believe it does not go far enough. In particular, they say it fails to stress that climate change is already having a severe impact on the continent and will continue to do so for the rest of century. At least a quarter of the sea ice around Antarctica will disappear in that time, say the critics, though this forecast is not mentioned in the study. One expert denounced the report - by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC - as 'misleading'. ...http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2000533,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

The Bush administration will notify Congress on Monday that Israel may have violated agreements with Washington when it fired U.S.-supplied cluster munitions into Lebanon in its war with Hezbollah last summer, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions. Citing State Department officials who spoke on Saturday, the Times said the preliminary findings had spawned a sharp debate -- which one official characterized as "head-butting" -- within the administration over whether Washington should penalize its ally for using cluster munitions in towns and villages where Hezbollah guerrillas placed rocket launchers. The Times reported some midlevel Pentagon and State Department officials contended Israel violated U.S. prohibitions on using cluster munitions against populated areas. Other officials in the two departments argue Israel used the arms in self-defense to stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks, which would amount to a technical violation at most....http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070128/ts_nm/usa_israel_dc

From high-dollar fraud to conspiracy to bribery and bid rigging, Army investigators have opened up to 50 criminal probes involving battlefield contractors in the war in Iraq and the U.S. fight against terrorism, The Associated Press has learned. Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations. “All of these involve operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait,” Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed Saturday to the AP. “CID agents will pursue leads and the truth wherever it may take us,” Grey said. “We take this very seriously.” ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/27/iraq/main2404758.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._2404758

A suicide attacker detonated a bomb among police on guard near a Shiite mosque in this northwestern Pakistani city Saturday, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 30, police said.The attack came as Pakistan's minority Shiites started to commemorate their most important religious festival, Ashura, often a target of sectarian violence. Paramilitary forces in armored vehicles were deployed to patrol Peshawar after the bombing.The blast went off in a bazaar area about 200 yards from a mosque that was the starting point for the Shiite procession. It caused a power outage that left the city center in darkness, complicating rescue efforts.Police official Aziz Khan said 15 people were killed and more than 30 wounded. ...http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/01/27/pakistan.bomb.ap/index.html?eref=rss_world